


keep it down

by warmfoothills



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Clothes Stealing, Grimmauld Place, Housemates, Living Together, M/M, Massage, Masturbation, Yoga, a long hot summer, an EXCESSIVE amount of parentheses, backyard quidditch, between the boys and ginny also gets a couple of interludes because we love her!, bit of breathplay, draco’s only slightly less of an idiot, harry’s an idiot, including blaise, it’s porn but i make you read 10k of faffing about first, not so accidental aural exhbitionism, not so accidental aural voyeurism, omg they were roommates etc, one small linny reference, references to draco/others, rugby and denial (harry), shampoo borrowing, snobbery and slobbery regarding food (draco), switching POVs, wall sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25630723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmfoothills/pseuds/warmfoothills
Summary: Malfoy’s an inconsiderately loud roommate and Harry’s over it.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 102
Kudos: 723





	keep it down

**Author's Note:**

> i actually wrote this last year and never liked it enough to post but i thought seeing as it’s mr harry james’ bday, i should tidy it up. as usual when it’s summer, i’m writing plotless, sunshiney nonsense, so don’t expect much actual story lol xx

There are lobsters in Harry’s fridge. Harry’s unsure if he’s ever actually seen a lobster in real life before and now there are four on his middle shelf, wrapped in plastic and shoved in next to the leftovers from last night.

Or, not real _life_ , he supposes. They don’t look like they’re going anywhere anytime soon, unless that somewhere is a large saucepan. Or whatever you’re supposed to cook lobsters in. 

Neville, presumably in response to whatever noise Harry made at seeing the newly crustacean-filled fridge, laughs as he ducks low under the arm Harry’s using to hold the door open, pulls a beer out.

“I’m assuming you didn’t buy these?” Harry asks him over his shoulder.

Neville only snorts in response.

Right, definitely Malfoy then. Ever since Malfoy moved in Harry’s fridge has somehow been elevated from out-of-date condiments to near Michelin star levels. There’d been a system at one point, before Malfoy, back when they all moved in (fresh from Hogwarts, no idea what to do with themselves, no money to speak of, or no desire to start flat-hunting, depending on who you asked), with separate shelves and designated drawers and everything, but it had barely lasted a couple of weeks. Harry’s seriously considering implementing it again, if only to reduce the amount of time he has to spend moving things like jars of caviar out of the way to get to the orange juice.

Still, he brought it on himself. It’s technically his fault that Malfoy’s ostentatious taste (osten-taste-tious?) in food is now cluttering up the fridge — Harry’s the one who offered him the room. He’d just been complaining so much, waving a glass of wine around and talking about how his parents had cut him off and how the commute from where he was staying on Pansy’s sofa to school was an absolute bitch in the mornings. He’s studying at the Muggle uni not far from Grimmauld in fact, is already a year in, an act Harry is convinced was the only thing he could have possibly done to endear him to Hermione.

That’s why he’d offered really, to shut Malfoy up. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time, not when everyone else had already moved in at one point or another and there was room. The way Malfoy frowned at the offer, surprised and a little bit hopeful, had made Harry’s stomach feel warm, which, in hindsight, should probably have been the first warning sign.

He’d woken up the next day with a dry mouth and that morning-after feeling like your body knows you’ve done something stupid before your brain wakes up enough to remember what it is. They’d had the first (and, to this day, only) house meeting about it, which had mostly consisted of everyone telling him they hardly cared one way or the other as long as Malfoy contributed to the food budget and wasn’t a massive prick to anyone.

So far he’s managed to uphold both conditions: he’s generally decent (though not entirely, he is still _Malfoy_ , after all) and whenever it’s his turn to shop the kitchen’s always overstocked with the kind of extravagant food none of the rest of them would even think to buy (hence: the lobsters) and bottles of the kind of alcohol they would have called pretentious if they weren’t busy drinking them every weekend.

“I don’t see what your problem is,” Neville says, pulling open a packet of stilton and port crisps. He and Malfoy are the only ones who ever eat the weird posh flavours that Malfoy buys. Harry had assumed it was a Pureblood thing, but Ginny won’t touch them and he’d ruled Ron an automatic outlier on account of the fact that if it was edible, Ron would put it in his mouth. “You let him move in. You could have said no. And he’s been a surprisingly ok housemate.” He shakes the bag at Harry as if in demonstration.

Harry sighs. “I know. I don’t have a problem, really.”

“Right.” Neville raises his eyebrows. Everyone in this house has a bloody eyebrow-raising problem. Maybe that’s why Malfoy fit right in.

The thing is, it isn’t really about the lobsters. Harry knows that. It isn’t even about Malfoy’s numerous other annoying food-related habits, like the smoothies he makes full of ingredients Harry’s never heard of, or how he lectures whoever’s around to listen about the benefits of spirulina and then ruins it by eating beans on toast three nights in a row. He does yoga and goes for runs and Harry once saw him eat jam straight from the jar with a spoon.

No, the real issue is that Malfoy is— _loud._ He sings all the time, apparently without realising he’s doing it, in the shower, when he’s cooking, along with the radio or TV or whatever’s playing, even adverts, and there’s always music coming from behind his closed door when he’s in. He chats to god knows who on his phone at all hours, traipsing through the house like he’s incapable of holding a conversation whilst sitting still. Harry hadn’t even thought he knew what a mobile _was._

And then there’s the other— stuff. Noises. When he comes home in the early hours of the morning and Harry’s forced to lie in bed, the sounds of Malfoy and whoever he’s picked up muffled but persistent through the wall. Sometimes there isn’t even anyone else, just Malfoy on his own, and he’s still loud. Sometimes Harry wishes the git would take a hint and cast a silencing charm.

Sometimes Harry wonders, if it bothers him so much, why he doesn’t just do it himself.

He hadn’t intentionally given Malfoy the room next to his, it was the only one both free and habitable when he moved in, and the fact that Harry’s bed is pushed right up against the adjoining wall hadn’t mattered at all when the room was empty. These days he toys with the idea of moving it almost every night, but it’s summer and too hot to be shoving heavy furniture around and, anyway, he likes it where it is. He just doesn’t like being woken up at one in the morning because Malfoy’s decided to hell with anyone else’s sleeping schedules, he wants to have _company_ over.

Ignoring Neville’s disbelieving eyebrows, Harry turns and reluctantly prods the lobsters out of the way to find the mustard he’d been looking for in the first place, then heads upstairs to eat in his room.

Grimmauld Place is a big, wizarding house, but it isn’t really a mansion or a manor or anything — there’s only one bathroom per floor, two on the ground floor if you counted that weird water closet no one uses, and it means he and Malfoy are sharing more than just a wall. Annoyingly, everyone’s started referring to the third floor as _theirs_ , which makes Harry’s stomach swoop weirdly every time.

Malfoy mostly manages to contain the chaos that is his complete inability to tidy up after himself to his room, though he does have a lot of products that spill out of the cabinet in their shared bathroom, cluttering the shelf and the sink and the lip of the bath. It doesn’t bother Harry as much as he thought he might have. Kreacher seems significantly more eager to clean with Malfoy around, and Malfoy doesn’t care when Harry borrows his expensive shampoo, so it’s a compromise Harry can live with, even if it means he often runs into a damp, flushed Malfoy fresh from the shower on weekday mornings, or else bumps into him sleep-ruffled and yawning on the landing during the weekends.

Like today, for instance. It’s gone lunch time, and Malfoy’s door is opening for the first time all day as Harry pads up the stairs, trying unsuccessfully to walk and eat at the same time without dropping tomato on the carpet. He secretly suspects that Malfoy sometimes waits until he hears Harry’s footsteps before venturing out of his room, just to orchestrate these little meetings. Harry wishes he wouldn’t. It’s quite hard to look someone in the eye when you’ve inadvertently heard what it sounds like when they’re having a really, _really_ good time.

“Morning,” Malfoy yawns, knuckling at one eye. He has on a ridiculous bathrobe and his hair is all over the place.

“Afternoon,” Harry says pointedly around his mouthful.

Malfoy smiles, unabashed. “Yes, I suppose so.” He pulls the door closed behind him and leans back against it. He does a lot of bloody leaning. It feels like every surface Harry looks at in this house there’s a Malfoy leaning up against it. Or, just the one Malfoy, obviously. There’s zero chance of catching Lucius all draped up against a spare door frame, and Harry thanks Merlin for it.

Malfoy turns his grin on the floor, flicks a glance up at Harry from under his hair. It’s not a very big landing. Not much of a space for hanging about really, and yet here they are.

“Lobsters,” Harry says, to break the slightly awkward silence.

Malfoy lifts a shoulder and his robe gapes worryingly at the chest. “We were out in Canary Wharf. I passed Billingsgate on my way back.”

“What, that fish market that opens at 4am?”

“We went _out_ , Potter. It _was_ 4am. Or thereabouts.”

Harry takes another bite of his sandwich. “And you can afford spontaneous lobster?”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “ _We_. I didn’t say I paid.”

Right. Because Malfoy has a surprising number of friends (yeah, Harry’s going to call them that even if the sounds some of them make when Malfoy brings them home are decidedly more than friendly) that he’s always hurrying out of the door to go and see.

Malfoy yawns again and pushes himself off of the door. “I’ll cook them tonight if they’re taking up that much space.” He shifts past Harry to get to the bathroom. “I know a wonderful thermidor recipe.”

///

There are deep gouges in Draco’s tin of hair pomade. Has no one ever taught Potter that you’re supposed to smooth your fingers in a circular motion to preserve the level surface of the product? Evidently not. He likely doesn’t even know what a pomade is, or where to use it, as his hair remains unruly as ever. Draco shudders to think where else Potter might have been slathering it. 

If he’s honest with himself, it’s not _entirely_ a shudder of disgust.

Moving in with Potter and a bunch of Gryffindors has been one of the unexpectedly better decisions of Draco’s life. Not that there’s much competition in that department. Aside from moving out of the Manor with little more than a _fuck you_ to his father and as many valuable artefacts as he could shove into his old school trunk, it might be the only good decision he’s ever made. And the whole, not-killing-Dumbledore, not-identifying-Potter-and-handing-him-over-to-the-Dark-Lord business, too, perhaps. 

Grimmauld is convenient for uni and for work (yes, a job, how plebeian, and it pays like shit but at least it _pays_ and it taught Draco how to make those fancy little leaves on top of cups of coffee) and the occupants are all reasonably agreeable. The creepy old House-elf even likes Draco best. Potter’s still a bit weird around him, but it’d been decent enough of him to even let Draco move in, so Draco considers it a win.

He carefully evens the top of the pomade back into an acceptable state, raking his sticky fingers through his hair until it lies the way it’s supposed to (less I-look-like-I-use-a-permanent-sticking-charm-on-my-scalp these days, he likes to think, and more sort of— artfully dishevelled), and heads down to the kitchen to determine whether he has any almost-stale croissants left, the ones he managed to save from the bin at work, or whether Longbottom has gotten there first. Nothing in this house is sacred, or safe from Gryffindor fingers, apparently.

Lovegood and Weasley are in there, brewing tea or whatever the correct name is for that pile of soggy, miscellaneous herbs Lovegood calls her “own blend”. The girl Weasley, to be clear. Draco really should start referring to these people by their first names, if only to avoid confusion. He lives with them, after all, and these two in particular have turned out to be surprisingly good company. The Weaselette is mean and doesn’t really give a shit about anyone’s opinion of her, characteristics Draco can appreciate in anyone, and Lovegood is sort of impossible to dislike, even if looking at her makes it hard to forget she was locked in his cellar for the better part of a year. Still, it isn’t his cellar anymore, and she seems to be doing ok.

He’s been meaning to ask the pair of them about Potter, actually, whether there’s anything to be done to make things between them less— well, _less_. There’s always been a strong dynamic there, but Draco likes to think he’s mellowed out a bit, and it doesn’t sit right with him, the tension in the air whenever they interact, the possibility that Potter still holds enough resentment to prevent them getting along. They’re quite literally living side by side, and Draco would rather things are as comfortable as they can be if they’re going to keep rubbing shoulders like this.

“So.” He pulls himself up onto the kitchen counter, swings his legs until his heels thunk satisfyingly into the wood, attempts to keep his tone appropriately casual. “What’s the deal with Potter?”

Weasley turns to him immediately, eyebrows raised. “You mean in general? Or why he’s been acting weird around you?”

He laughs. Another thing he likes about her: she has no time for bullshit. “The latter, I suppose.”

Weasley shrugs and shares a far too knowing look with Lovegood.

“Harry’s not very good at realising things,” Lovegood says cryptically, nudging Draco out of the way gently to get to the cupboard behind him.

“Right.” Draco looks back at Weasley, who only smiles, showing all of her teeth. “And what are we proposing he hasn’t realised? Only if it’s a _why the fuck did I let Malfoy move in, this is horrifically awkward and we should boot him out immediately_ kind of realisation, I’d rather know sooner than later. Pansy’ll need time to get the sofa-bed ready.”

Weasley laughs at him. “It’s not. Harry’d never throw you out on the street.”

“Not because he feels sorry for you,” adds Lovegood, somehow knowing that’s where Draco’s thoughts were headed. “He doesn’t mind you living here.”

Draco snorts. “Glad to hear I’m tolerable.”

“Barely,” Weasley says.

Draco flips her off, then sighs and sags back against the cupboard door. He’ll just have to let Potter be, and hope things will settle on their own. “Did Longbottom eat my last croissant?”

Weasley grins again. “No,” she says. “Ron did.”

“Bastard.”

“Quite right. He finished the milk too.”

///

“Are you watching this?”

Ron flicks Harry on the back of the head, making him sit up from where he’d been half-asleep on the sofa and swat at him in annoyance. Some news story is playing on the telly but Harry hadn’t been paying attention even before he dozed off. Malfoy came in at 3am last night, alone, judging by the single set of footsteps and drunk, judging by the sound of him smacking into the door, swearing loudly and struggling with the handle for a solid minute before getting it open. The racket of that alone was enough to startle Harry awake, and everything that came after it had done an excellent job of making sure he stayed that way. Awake. Staring at the dark ceiling. Trying not to listen.

Ron does’t actually wait for an answer, just switches the channel and vaults over the back of the sofa so that he’s sitting on Harry’s shins. Harry shoves him off half-heartedly.

“Too hot,” he says.

Ron raises his beer in agreement. It’s chilled, damp with condensation. Harry debates getting up to get his own, or whether he can manage a specific enough _Accio_ to open the door without summoning the whole fridge.

Just as he’s about to start digging in the sofa cushions for his wand, Malfoy comes in, scanning the room for his bag and scooping it up with one hand when he finds it propped against an armchair.

He’s like bloody Hermione, going in to do schoolwork over summer. At first Harry assumed he was trying to stay ahead, make sure he was top of the class, but it seems obvious now that he actually, unbelievable as it sounds, _likes_ what he’s studying.

Harry watches him as he shoves a couple of heavy books he’d been carrying under one arm into the bag, eyeing the familiar shade of his jumper. It’s soft and worn so thin that it’s perfect for summer, when you want something comforting that won’t suffocate you in this stupid heat.

Harry's been missing it for two weeks.

Big on him to begin with, it hangs off Malfoy’s frame enticingly, cutting off at his waist due to his (very slight, thanks) height advantage so that its formless shape looks somehow deliberate rather than the small tent it resembles when Harry wears it.

Harry narrows his eyes. “That’s mine.”

Malfoy looks up at him and then down at his outfit. His cheeks darken, though his expression remains unconcerned. “Is it?”

Harry suppresses an urge to go over there and pull it over his head in frustration. Malfoy’s always blushing — it shows up beautifully— er, _noticeably_ on his pale skin — but it’s like he doesn’t realise, or doesn’t care. Whenever Harry feels his own face grow hot it makes him want to hide, embarrassed at being embarrassed, and it annoys him that Malfoy can walk around, haughty as ever, even when his whole face has gone pink. Just once, Harry’d like to see him less than composed. He’s certainly heard it enough times.

 _I know what you sound like when you’re getting off,_ he yells in his head, but that only makes _him_ blush, and Malfoy has already left, taking Harry’s jumper with him.

///

Ginny is sweating. It’s really too hot to be doing anything more energetic than lying on the kitchen floor under a cooling charm, especially with someone who’s currently too distracted to even follow a simple game of one-on-one airborne dodgeball.

“Some of us,” she says, throwing the football at Harry’s head. “Actually want to play.”

Overheating, Ginny had thought, was at least preferable to being bored. Except now she’s pissed off, sticky and, thanks to Harry’s preoccupation, still not entirely _not_ bored, which is making her think a run and a cold bath might have been a better way to spend the afternoon.

Harry looks over when the ball bounces off his skull and glares at her. “What?”

“Stop staring at Malfoy and concentrate. I’m over here getting all sweaty whilst you’re hanging in mid-air with your mouth open.”

She tightens her ponytail, gripping her broom between her thighs to keep steady, and gives Harry a pointed look. He’s been absolutely hopeless since Malfoy moved in.

“I’m not _staring,_ ” he says grumpily, lowering his voice even though they’re hovering twenty foot off the ground and Malfoy definitely can’t hear them from where he’s sprawled on the grass with Luna and Pansy. Malfoy’s phone is blasting Britney Spears so loudly it’s a wonder they can even hear each other.

“Well you’re certainly not _catching_ ,” Ginny says, diving and snatching the ball off of the ground. She left her good Quaffle at the Burrow and the weight of the football is throwing off her aim. If Harry wasn’t so distracted he might even have got a couple of shots past her. As it is, Malfoy’s shirt is off, so he’s losing by an embarrassing margin.

Really, boys are unbelievable. Pansy and Luna both have their legs out, Pansy even has her top hiked up and her (pierced, no less) midriff on display, but is that affecting Ginny’s ability to concentrate on the ball? No, because she has the capacity to think with her brain instead of her dick. Metaphorically, or whatever. 

“You’re forty-three points down,” she says once she’s soared back up again. Harry literally has not moved from his mid-air spot.

Below them, Luna’s drink explodes as she opens it. Malfoy springs up laughing, drops running down his bare chest and hair spattered pink by whatever carbonated monstrosity Luna picked up from the newsagents on the corner.

Harry blinks, his broom listing distractedly to one side. He turns to Ginny, wide-eyed. “I won’t lie, I’m not even sure what we’re playing.”

This time, she manages to throw the ball at just the angle to knock his glasses right off of his face.

///

The living room, Harry’s starting to think, really has a lot of wonderful features. A neutral, communal space... close to the kitchen... good natural light... three floors away from Malfoy’s bedroom et cetera. Maybe he should just sleep down here from now on. He already seems to be spending half his time on the relative safety of the sofa, and it isn’t _that_ lumpy. A dodgy back might be a reasonable price to pay for consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep.

Ginny flops onto the other sofa. “Going to move your bed down here?”

Harry says nothing. He’s seriously considered it.

She huffs in amusement at his silence. “Was that Zabini’s voice I heard on my way downstairs?”

Almost definitely. And Malfoy’s too. And the sound of their mouths colliding, if, you know, Harry were to hazard a guess.

He sighs. “Want to swap?”

“Sod off, my room has the best garden view.”

That’s true. It would feel weird anyway, letting anyone else have Sirius’ old room. Maybe he can convince _Malfoy_ to switch with someone..

Ginny pipes up again. “Harry, you know he has the right to do whatever, or _whom_ ever—”

“I know!” Harry cuts her off, unable to meet her gaze. “I know. It’s just.” He stares up at a crack in the ceiling. “Does he have to be so— loud about it?”

Ginny looks at him, deadpan. “You don’t care about anyone else bringing people home. Hell, you should try being next door to Dean and Seamus, they’re at it all hours.”

Harry raises his eyebrows at the shifty look on her face — far from annoyed, it looks more like she doesn’t actually mind that much.

“Shut up.” She lobs a decorative pillow at him even though he’d said nothing. “You don’t even care when _I_ bring people home, and I’m the only one in this house you’ve ever slept with.”

“Yeah, but they’re girls,” Harry says, propping the stolen cushion behind his head. “And you’re you.”

Ginny’s eyes narrow. “And what’s that supposed to mean? You’d have a problem if I was having sex with men? Or if Malfoy was bringing home girls?”

Harry sighs. “No, I. Sorry, I didn’t mean— you know.” He waves his hand vaguely. “You can sleep with whoever you want.”

“I know.” She drops back against the sofa with a huff.

He really _hadn’t_ meant anything by it. He knows Ginny is touchy about the whole thing considering her relatively recent realisation that she wanted to stop dating men altogether, but he isn’t fine watching her bring home other girls because he thinks they’re somehow less of a _threat_ or whatever she might accuse him of. He’s fine with it because he doesn’t really think about her in that way anymore. Seeing her happy and having fun, even with people that aren’t him, only makes him happy.

Hearing _Malfoy_ having fun makes him want to tear his hair out and shove it in his ears.

Surely, though, that has to be because he practically has a front row seat to all of Malfoy’s evening— activities. He’d be the same with any of the rest of them. If Ginny or Luna or Neville or Seamus and Dean, or — God forbid — Ron and Hermione were keeping him up half the night with their obnoxious sex noises, he’d be annoyed at them too. But they aren’t, and he never thinks about what they get up to. Or not much, anyway. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

The fact that Malfoy is apparently sleeping with half of London (whilst Harry himself remains alone and unbothered to go out and find anyone to bring home) can’t even explain Harry’s frustration, because the noise annoys him even when Malfoy’s by himself.

It’s simply bad roommate etiquette, that’s all. Harry needs his sleep.

///

When Draco knocks on the bathroom door that evening, the reply comes, distorted and echoey through the wood. “I’m in the bath.”

He rolls his eyes. “And I’m going out. I need to get ready.”

“Use a different bathroom,” Potter says. He sounds exasperated. His face is probably all frowny and flushed from the hot water. Draco bites his lip.

“I’m coming in.”

There’s a squawk as Draco shifts the bolt with a distracted _Alohomora_ and pushes the door open. He politely averts his eyes from where Potter sits looking all wet and annoyed — Draco was right, it’s a frustratingly good look on him — and goes over to the mirror.

“Is this normal roommate behaviour?” Potter asks as Draco pulls on a sweatband to keep his hair out of his face.

Draco shrugs, glancing at him in the mirror. “We were at boarding school for seven years, Potter. What did you do in Gryffindor? Shower one at a time and get dressed in the loo cubicle?”

Potter says nothing, glaring harder. He’s sunk down so far in the water that only his head is visible. Draco ignores him and starts washing his face.

The bathroom smells good, sort of clean and woody, which means Potter definitely nicked some of his products again. Not that Draco really minds. It’s distracting, is all, having to wash himself with soap bars that may or may not have touched Potter’s body, lathering shampoo into his hair from a bottle that might have, only hours before, had Potter’s hand wrapped around it, squeezing.

“Where are you going anyway?” Potter asks him. Draco looks at him in the mirror, watches as he sits up a bit, pokes a foot out of the water and stares at his toe.

“Blaise’s,” Draco says, just to see the way Potter’s eyes narrow for a second in annoyance. He wonders if Potter is aware that he wears every emotion on his face, right there for everyone to read. They’re going straight out to a bar after he meets Pans at Blaise’s, but Potter doesn’t need to know that.

Potter grunts noncommittally and then sighs, leaning his head back against the side of the bath.

“Do you think I should try going out more?” he asks suddenly, addressing the ceiling.

Draco studies his reflection carefully in the glass. “I don’t know, Potter. Do you want to?”

He makes an aborted shrugging movement. The bath water laps gently around his shoulders, darkened to an even deeper brown by this ridiculous heat wave they’re having. “Not really. Just wondered if I’m missing out.” His tone turns vaguely accusatory. “You seem to have fun.”

Draco feels his face warm and quickly starts massaging moisturiser into it. “You have fun, too, Potter. You’re not working at the minute and all you do is lounge around here and play that barbaric ball game.”

He can’t imagine Potter in a club. He rather assumes he wants to avoid the wizarding ones for the same reasons Draco does, and the Muggle ones are hardly Potter’s scene. Most of them are, in Draco’s opinion, either boring or tacky, and Potter looks like he might be scared off by the kind of places Draco and his friends go to.

Potter doesn’t answer, seeming to consider this as he sinks back down into the water and comes up with his hair all wet. It doesn’t even sit flat when it’s soaked, still curling ridiculously in several directions. Draco deliberately looks away.

“Have a party here if you’re that bothered,” he says.

///

Harry determinedly isn’t thinking about Malfoy as he steers the trolley into the _Beer, Wine & Spirits _ aisle.

“Excellent,” Ron proclaimed when Harry announced at breakfast that he was bored and he was having a _thing_ next weekend, if people didn’t mind, and they were all welcome to invite whoever they wanted, in fact, please could they, because most of the people Harry liked already lived with him and if they were going to throw a party, it should probably have more than ten guests. Malfoy wasn’t there but he’d smirked awfully at Harry when he caught them all on their way out to buy booze.

“Buy something decent for God’s sake,” he said on his way past, knocking his shoulder gently into Harry’s. Harry felt the bump, warm all down his arm, all the way to the supermarket.

“We do have at least one bottle of gin left,” Hermione’s saying, standing on tiptoe to inspect the top shelf. “But I think Luna tried to infuse it with Dirigible plums and I’m not sure it’s still drinkable.”

“Better get another couple then,” Ron says, reaching over her head to grab a bottle in each hand. “What the hell is Jägermeister?” he asks, pausing.

“Repulsive,” Hermione says, pulling a face. “That’s what it is.”

Ron puts it in the trolley.

///

“According to this, I should expect to start developing romantic feelings for someone I consider a friend this week,” Luna says, holding up a magazine with a picture of a toothy, pre-teen girl on the front. She frowns. “But our divination correspondent at the Quibbler already owled across the horoscopes for the whole month and told me I need to be on the lookout for offers that seem too good to be true.”

Ginny, feeling her chest tighten weirdly, doesn’t turn around from her perusal of the Muggle newspapers. “It’s a load of rubbish, Lu. You know the Muggles can’t predict the future to save their own lives.”

Luna makes a doubtful noise. Ginny listens to her turning more pages, staring resolutely at a frozen picture of a politician she doesn’t know. The way Muggle photos don’t move really weirds her out.

“Look,” Luna says, appearing next to her with the magazine. “There are whole pages of just horse pictures.” She grins happily and sweeps her long hair over her shoulder, causing a man passing by them to distractedly push his trolley into a shelf. Ginny can, privately, relate.

“Look at _this_ ,” she says, rifling through the pages herself. There’s a quiz with multiple choice questions and the title DENIAL: IT’S NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT across the top. “Reckon I should tear this out and leave it on Harry’s pillow?”

Luna’s smile turns indulgent and she shakes her head. “He’ll figure it out. Draco’s not exactly being subtle.”

Ginny snorts.

At this point Neville, who ran off with a pained look to surreptitiously _Aguamenti_ the dead-looking plants in the Home & Garden section, appears at the end of the aisle. “They’re done,” he calls, gesturing to the checkouts with his head.

“C’mon,” Ginny says, taking the magazine out of Luna’s hand and replacing it with her own so that she can tug her towards the front of the shop. “We might as well make Harry buy us this. It’s got free stickers.”

///

“This party,” Blaise says, pulling his shirt over his head and falling backwards onto the bed. “Is it like, strictly a Gryffindor thing, or are they letting anyone in?”

Draco snorts, only half-listening. “I live here, too.”

“Right.” Blaise pops the button on his trousers. Draco spares him a glance from where he sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed, wondering if he’s imagining the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “So I can come?”

Draco shrugs. “If you want.”

Blaise kicks at him with one foot. “I _do_ want to come. Like, right now.” Draco looks at him properly, half-naked and reclined against the pillows, a very pointed look on his face, like he really isn’t used to getting this far in the undressing process before being jumped. To be fair to him, they _don’t_ usually get this far. 

When Draco still hasn’t moved, Blaise’s smooth face comes the closest to a frown that it ever gets: a tiny crease between his perfect eyebrows.“Why are you so distracted? If you’re not in the mood I can go elsewhere.” He smiles lazily and stretches his arms over his head. “Ginevra's looking good these days,” he adds, inspecting his nails.

Draco rolls his eyes. “She’s exclusively off men,” he says, crawling over Blaise so that their hips press together. He gives a half-hearted thrust, bites his lip, tries to listen for any sign of Potter next door.

Blaise’s eyes narrow. “And you should get off _me_ if you’re going to be boring.”

“Shut up.”

“I thought you liked me loud.” Blaise raises an eyebrow. Draco can feel he’s hard already, despite the careful display of indifference. “Isn’t that why we always come back here?”

“I— what?” Draco, distracted from his attempts to hear whether Potter’s in or not, looks down at his friend.

Blaise laughs, gripping Draco’s waist and rolling up into him. “I’m not stupid, Draco. And I’m also not offended. Just admit it so that we can get on with giving him a show.”

In spite of himself, Draco’s cock twitches at that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, voice gone breathy. There’s a faint sound that could have come from next door.

“Potter,” Blaise says, ever blunt, and then laughs at Draco’s glare.

“What about him?” Draco tries to snap, pushing down into the now steady rhythm of Blaise’s hips. “Shit. You should take your trousers off.”

Blaise shoots him a look but rolls them easily, holding Draco in place so that he can cup him through his jeans with one hand. “ _You_ should step it up if you want him to hear you through these walls.” His smile widens when Draco, unable to help it, lets out an embarrassingly loud whine and tries not to writhe on the bed.

“Fuck,” Draco says, forgetting to scowl. There’s a distinct thump from next door. Heat flares hard in his stomach. Blaise grins even wider. “Fuck.”

///

The summer days, long enough to begin with, seem to stretch on longer and longer that week. Harry’s starting to think he might be losing his mind a little, keeps walking around in a sort of warm haze, the kind where he often catches himself standing, eyes unfocussed, staring unseeingly at random walls whilst his mind strays unhelpfully to Malfoy.

Things have escalated. Malfoy’s volume levels, the amount of self-awareness Harry is willing to indulge in, they’ve escalated.

Look, he’s decided he can admit it. Malfoy’s fit. He has a very good body and a very nice face and he’s still very much an arse, but in less of an I-want-to-punch-his-nose-in kind of way and more in a please-God-yes-insult-me-again-with-that-mouth sort of way. Or something.

Harry has accepted that and moved on, which apparently means complaining even more to Ginny about the incessant noise until she threatens to bring the old Bat-Bogey Hex out of retirement.

“Frankly, it’s embarrassing,” she says on Wednesday, standing, hands on hips, in the middle of his bedroom. “If you refuse to talk to him about it, at least give him a taste of his own healing potion.”

Harry shoots her a look, wonders fleetingly if it was wizards who butchered Muggle idioms, or vice versa. “I’m not finding someone to sleep with just to piss Malfoy off.”

As illicitly appealing as the idea of the roles being reversed is, Harry can’t be sure Malfoy won’t just lord it over him. He isn’t stupid enough to risk a lifetime of humiliation, and regardless, he isn’t interested in getting off with some nameless somebody, for reasons he’d rather not think about too deeply right now.

Ginny flops down onto the end of his bed, exasperated. “Because getting to have sex is such a horrible prospect.” She stares at him, calculating. “C’mon. We’ll do it now. Apparently you can’t be trusted to do it yourself.”

Harry blanches. “What?”

Ginny laughs at his wide eyes. “Not actual sex, you idiot. We’ll just make some noise. Make him _think_ you’re getting laid. Show him how annoying it is.” She mutters something else under her breath. Harry might catch the word _jealous_ , but he also might be imagining things.

“Gin, I’m pretty sure he knows we’re not sleeping together.”

Ginny rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but he doesn’t know it’s me in here with you, does he?” She starts shifting up and down on the bed until the ancient springs are creaking.

“He might not even be in,” Harry protests, half-laughing as Ginny wiggles her eyebrows at him.

She stops and they both freeze, listening for the telltale sound of music from the other side of the wall.

Harry sighs. “Ok, fine, he’s in, but I don’t think this is going to solve anything.”

Ginny only pulls a face at him, slapping a hand on the wall that separates his and Malfoy’s rooms. She looks him dead in the eye and lets out an exaggerated moaning noise. Harry almost blushes.

“Gin—” he starts but she glares at him and moans again. Harry shakes his head at her, grinning in spite of himself. She wasn’t especially loud when they were together and he really doesn’t see her like that anymore, but it still makes something in his stomach sit up and take notice. She’s beautiful, after all, and one of his best friends, and she’s on his bed.

And he’s been in a permanent state of semi-arousal since Malfoy’s fucking move-in day, but that’s beside the point.

“Pull your weight, slacker,” Ginny stage-whispers at him, shoving him with her foot. “Or do you want him to think you’re so shit in bed that you just lie there like a stuffed Hippogriff.”

“I am not fake porn-star moaning through a wall,” Harry whispers back furiously.

Ginny pinches him painfully in the side and he yelps. She fake-moans again, eyes dancing with mirth.

He rubs his side, glares hard. “Now he’s going to think I’m into some kinky shit.” 

Ginny only cackles and pinches him again. “I suppose that would explain your silence. Maybe I’ve got you gagged.”

Harry’s preparing to smother her with his pillow when there’s a knock on the door. He jumps — the music from Malfoy’s room hasn’t even cut off — and looks frantically at Ginny, wondering if she’s going to really commit to this and push them into some compromising position. She freezes for only a second before pointing her wand in his face and shooting a warming charm at him so strong that his cheeks darken and it ruffles his hair. Then she shifts so that the strap of her top falls down her shoulder, leans casually back against the wall and kicks him meaningfully in the leg.

“Uh,” Harry says, strangled. “Come in?”

Malfoy opens the door. “Oh,” he says, taking in Ginny’s sprawled position. Harry watches his eyes linger on her bare shoulder, on Harry’s hair, even more hopelessly tangled than usual from their brief scuffle. He frowns.

“Yes?” Harry asks. It comes out breathless, which probably doesn’t help the situation. Or significantly _does_ help, depending on how you look at it.

Malfoy shakes his head slightly. “Sorry, I thought—” His frown deepens. “Never mind. I was looking for my jacket. You didn’t borrow it did you? The black one.”

Harry shakes his head, mouth still dry. “No,” he croaks, clears his throat. “Uh, no, sorry. Have you checked the coat pegs?” which is a monumentally stupid thing to say, all things considered, but then Harry’s fairly sure Malfoy is only using the jacket as an excuse to come in and see what’s happening, so. _Harry_ isn’t the kind of inconsiderate person who steals other people’s clothes. Just their toiletries, sometimes.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Yes, Potter, I checked the coat pegs.”

Harry pulls a face, but Malfoy’s already turning around, heading back to his own room. Harry looks at Ginny, who shoved a hand in her mouth as soon as she was out of Malfoy’s eyeline and is shaking with silent laughter.

“And try to keep it down,” Malfoy’s voice trails back over his shoulder from the landing. “Some of us are trying to work.”

///

The this-was-entirely-my-idea-and-has-absolutely-nothing-to-do-with-Malfoy party, as Harry has taken to calling it in his head, starts at the embarrassingly early hour of 3pm. Or, truth be told, most people don’t show up until much later, but Harry walks in on Ginny and Malfoy mixing drinks mid-afternoon and they recruit him as their unwilling cocktail-tester until they all lose track of time and the day-drinking morphs into the official party without any of them really realising.

“Potter, come _here,_ ” Malfoy says, looking up from under half-lowered lids when Harry finds them in the kitchen with what appears to be several hundred bottles of alcohol set out on the table.

Ginny snorts. “Yes, _Potter_ ,” she says, mimicking Malfoy’s accent. It’s seriously starting to freak Harry out how well Malfoy and Ginny are getting along.

“Bit, ah, early isn’t it?” he asks, nodding his head at the drinks between them and desperately trying to avoid meeting Malfoy’s _come hither_ eyes. Not that Harry knows what those look like, per se. Just— that’s what he’d imagine. If he _had_ ever imagined, that is. Which he has not.

They both ignore him. “Try _this_ ,” Ginny instructs, sending a martini glass full of something orange and glittery over to him with such a wonky levitating charm that Harry thinks it best to resign himself to the role of guinea-pig with good grace and go and join them, if only to stop the floor from getting too sticky.

It has to be sometime past 9pm now, because the sun hasn’t quite completely set but the house is mostly dark and full and there’s music playing. He and Malfoy stand in the hallway, backs pressed to opposite walls, and Harry can’t quite remember how they got there.

“Are you drunk?” he asks stupidly.

Malfoy shrugs. “A bit. Not as much as everyone else.”

“Yeah.” Harry cannot tear his eyes away from where Malfoy’s top dips low over his collar bones, exposing the bare skin. He seems to only wear clothes that are either two sizes too big and hang off him, or tight enough that they leave literally nothing to the imagination. Weirdly, the oversized ones are worse. They make Harry want to gather all that fabric in his hands and push it slowly up, over Malfoy’s stomach—

“This is fun,” Malfoy says happily, gulping more of his drink and smacking his lips. He smiles so easily when he’s drinking, it’s hard to look away from. (And also quite hard to look at directly, which means Harry has become closely acquainted with drunk-Malfoy’s right cheekbone, an area he’s deemed reasonably safe to stare at.) “I’m glad you let me move in, Potter.”

It isn’t really a thank you, but Harry beams right back.

///

Draco, to his downfall, has only just remembered that Ravenclaws can be quite as devious as Slytherins, when they really put their minds to it. He’s also just recalled why he doesn’t usually drink tequila, and both sudden remembrances explain why he’s currently losing solidly at cards to Lovegood.

“I thought you said you were good, Draco?” Lovegood says, not unkindly. It’s very hard to be angry at her, even when she’s taking his money.

“I was,” he says. Sighs. “Am, I mean. Clearly I’m having a bad night.”

They aren’t playing with real gold — Draco doesn’t have enough of that to throw around any more, something he’s just about managed to get used to — but he’s become quite attached to the small pile of pistachio nuts they’ve been using as bartering chips.

“Better than me,” Thomas sighs, throwing his cards down in defeat. He’s doing even worse than Draco, although the fact that Finnegan keeps eating his pistachios definitely isn’t helping.

He’s quite fit really, Dean, Draco notes distractedly as Lovegood shuffles and re-deals. Not that Draco would ever go there, unless he wants to hear what a castration hex sounds like in a strong Irish accent, but still. He can _look_.

He hears a snort next to him and turns to find Ginny giving him a look. (He’s finally relented re: the first name situation. There really are too many of them and it was getting confusing.) She raises her eyebrows and jerks her head in a completely unsubtle way at her ex-boyfriend. Draco suppresses a wince. As much as he’s found an unexpected friend in her, he doesn’t like being reminded that they essentially have the same taste in men. He even saw her make a move on Blaise before, back when she was still figuring herself out.

Blaise, Dean.. Draco had even thought Michael Corner was attractive in a whiny, floppy haired sort of way, and then there’s Potter, of course, who’s not in the room, as far as Draco can tell. He hasn’t actually seen him at all since they stood in the hallway and grinned at each other like idiots. Quite embarrassing, now Draco remembers it, and that was before he even started on the tequila.

He elbows Ginny in the side to get her to stop wiggling her eyebrows at him like that.

“Are you in again?” Lovegood asks him.

Draco shrugs, picks up a stray pistachio and cracks it open with a thumbnail. “Why not.”

The rest of the night blurs: Luna fleecing them all at poker, Pansy forcing him to dance with her for _twenty-one_ consecutive songs, someone — Weasley, if he remembers correctly, though by the end he’s little more than an orange smudge — foolishly challenging him to a shot contest until they’re both in danger of spending the rest of the night hugging the toilet.

He comes to slumped next to Pansy on a sofa that’s been pushed up against the wall to clear space, trying to decide if he can be bothered to make the trip all the way upstairs to bed.

It has to be late, though he has no idea what the actual time is, just that he’s drunk and his body’s tired and a little turned on from all the dancing. He notices Potter sitting against the opposite wall, eyes closed but seemingly awake as two girls Draco vaguely recognises from the Gryffindor Quidditch team sit beside him, talking quietly.

Draco stretches and stands, decision made, places a gentle hand on Pansy’s head as he gets up. She’s fallen asleep but he has enough experience sharing a bed with her to know not to bother waking her up.

His brain, sluggish but still awake, doesn’t feel quite ready to sleep yet but he figures might as well go up to bed. Potter and his ex-teammates aside, most of the people still awake are Hufflepuffs, and that’s too much to ask anyone to deal with in the early hours of Saturday morning.

///

For some stupid, self-sabotaging reason, Harry practically follows Malfoy upstairs. He could have stayed where he was, slept on the floor or at least dozed against the wall until enough time had passed that Malfoy was probably in bed, asleep, but instead Malfoy’s footsteps have barely faded before Harry’s up and covering a yawn, clapping people on the shoulder goodnight as he passes, climbing the stairs to the third floor.

Malfoy is not asleep. He wasn’t asleep when Harry brushed his teeth as loud as humanly possible, nor when he’d deliberately banged his bedroom door closed behind him, and he isn’t asleep now that Harry is in bed, the room dark and warm. But not quiet, because Malfoy isn’t asleep.

The thing is, Harry’s quite drunk. And the thing about _that_ is, it means he’s tired. Tired of pretending that this whole Malfoy situation annoys him due to strictly noble reasons.

With the filters in his head washed away by inadvisable amounts of gin, he can acknowledge that it pisses him off being able to hear Malfoy, not because it makes him uncomfortable, but because it makes him want to go next door and shut him up. Kick out whoever else is in there, whoever it is that gets to pull sounds like that out of him, or, if he’s alone, tell him he needn’t be when Harry is right there and willing. Smother the noises with his mouth, swallow them down. Hear them breathed into his ear, up close rather than muffled through solid plaster.

Malfoy moans again. Fuck, _surely_ he has to have someone in there with him. Harry had watched him climb the stairs alone but he’s never known someone make this much noise unless they’re getting fucked within an inch of their life. Maybe he has some kind of toy or something, or is fingering himself open steadily, other hand working his cock slowly as he shoves his hips down.

 _Ah_ , that’s an image. The old inch/mile metaphor springs dazedly to mind — relenting and allowing his brain to create a picture to match the noises he’s been bombarded with for months has apparently opened the floodgates: Malfoy, pale hand wrapped around himself. Malfoy, sweaty and bright-eyed, panting as his fist moves quick and tight. Malfoy getting off in the shower. Malfoy rolling over first thing in the morning and just pushing down into his sheets, half-awake and lazy. Malfoy, unable to stop himself crying out at how good it feels, or else unwilling, liking that someone might hear him, that _Harry_ might—

It goes suddenly quiet and Harry swears under his breath. It’s always difficult to know when Malfoy is going to come because he makes so much noise the whole way through that Harry can’t tell when he’s getting close. Not that he’s trying to come at the same time as him, or anything, it’s just a nice thought. Or creepy as fuck, he supposes. Oh _God_ , this is bad, and wrong, probably, and a serious invasion of— something, and maybe Malfoy goes quiet when he comes because his whole body tenses and his mouth opens on a silent gasp or he bites his lip, hard and his eyes screw up and shit, ok, that’s it. Harry rolls over and bites down onto his pillow, breathing heavily into the fabric as he empties himself into his hand. It makes a mess of his sheets but, unlike some people, he prefers not to risk being overheard.

///

The next morning, Harry pulls himself out of bed and into the shower, already reasoning with himself. He had a lot to drink last night and Malfoy had been louder than he’d ever heard him. Practically shameless. Harry can’t be blamed for getting turned on by such things. It’s a natural reaction.

His determined justifications do little to actually stop him feeling horribly guilty and he resolves to try and put the whole incident completely out of his mind, which turns out to be easier said than done when he comes downstairs to find almost everyone he knows (and a couple of people he doesn’t) bent over in workout gear in his sitting room, including Malfoy, who’s at the front and is wearing leggings.

“What,” Harry says, wondering if he’s somehow walked into an alternate reality, “is happening?”

“Yoga.”

“Sorry,” he says, leaning heavily on the doorframe. “I didn’t mean that. I meant why. Why is yoga happening?”

“It’s good for you.” Malfoy says. Someone must have magically enlarged the space. Harry does not remember it having the capacity to hold what looks like at least half of the party guests from last night, especially with their limbs stretched out in all directions like that.

He stares as Luna waves happily at him from where she’s curled on the floor, her legs folded pretzel style. Is that Ernie Macmillan at the back? How exactly had Parkinson gotten her foot behind her head like that?

Malfoy claps his hands, turning away from Harry. “Alright, watch me do this one first because it’s tricky if you don’t position your back correctly.” He lies down on the floor and kicks his legs up over his head. Harry turns and flees back into the hallway so fast he stumbles.

He finds Ron in the kitchen (reassuringly dressed like a normal person and not like he’s just walked off the set of an eighties workout video) eating a bacon sandwich and frowning down at the sports pages of the _Prophet_. Ron takes one look at his face and snorts, somehow managing to keep his mouthful of bread from spraying the table.

“Here,” he says, sliding a mug over to Harry and waving his wand so that the teapot starts to pour. “You look like you need it.”

///

It doesn’t escape Draco’s notice that Potter starts behaving even more oddly around him after the night of the party. In fact, it starts to get a little unnerving after the sixth time Potter promptly leaves a room just as Draco enters it.

Has he finally caught on to the fact that Draco is, maybe, a little bit into him and is now uncomfortable? He’s fun to mess with, sure, but Draco doesn’t want to make things weird and have to move out.

Or, has Potter realised that he might reciprocate Draco’s— _feelings_ , for want of a better word, and is waiting to see what Draco will do next? Draco isn’t blind. He sees the way Potter looks at him sometimes.

If so, he ponders from the library where he’s resolutely ignoring his textbooks in order to stare out of the window, maybe it’s time to up his game.

As if summoned by Draco’s musings, Potter appears in the doorway half-dressed, standing on one leg to stretch the muscles of the other, and looks right at Draco. There’s a heavy silence. He switches legs, grunting slightly, not breaking eye contact.

Draco would have thought this payback for his whole yoga display at the weekend — the look on Potter’s face when Draco had demonstrated the plow pose — but unfortunately this is something Potter does every week. Not the intense eye contact, so much, but the weekly pre-game stretching before he heads off to pummel several large, sweaty men in pursuit of a ball. 

Draco doesn’t get it, personally. He likes Quidditch, of course, and he isn’t above a bit of rough play, but it just seems excessive, the way the Muggles on the telly throw themselves on top of each other. The shorts are— an upshot, but still. Potter doesn’t even wear those tiny, tight ones when _he_ plays. They’re loose and almost down to his knees. Pity.

Ginny told Draco once that it’s good for Potter to get his aggression out via a healthy outlet like contact sport. Draco can think of several other ways Potter could release his pent up energy, if he wanted.

“Going to rugby,” Potter says then, unnecessarily, finally looking away from Draco.

Granger, the only other person in the room, doesn’t look up from her book. “Yes, we gathered. Can you stop at Tesco on your way back? We’re out of bread again.”

///

Harry gets home from rugby that evening with a splitting headache and the usual, bone-deep satisfaction of feeling like his body’s been steamrollered. It’s why he started playing in the first place, right after the war, to exhaust himself to the point where his mind would shut up for two minutes, and he still loves the physicality of it, the way it calms him down, even now his head’s in a much better place than it was at eighteen. He likes, too, that the guys he plays with don’t know Harry Potter as anyone but a bloke who looks too small to be any good, but can get the ball all the way up the field to score before anyone even notices he’s got it.

What he doesn’t like, is the stupid sight correction charm. He can’t wear his glasses for games, for obvious reasons, unless he wants to replace them every week, so he sticks with the spell, even though it feels like someone’s digging their thumbs into his temples when practice goes on too long.

Today had one of those days, all of them eager to take advantage of the good weather, so his head’s still pounding when he comes downstairs after a hot shower to get some food and finds Malfoy lounging alone on the sofa, book abandoned on the floor next to him. He has a headphone in one ear and Harry can hear the music, tinny but bass-filled, from the other side of the room.

Malfoy looks up as he enters, eyes him as he pauses in the doorway. “Good game?”

“Hm, not bad,” he says, wincing as his head throbs again.

Malfoy, annoyingly perceptive as he is, looks shrewdly at him. “Someone stamp on your head again?”

Harry rolls his eyes, regretting it instantly as it makes the pain spike harder. “Nah, it’s just,” he waves his hand vaguely. “You know. The sight correction charm always gives me a headache.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrow thoughtfully and then he sits up and pats the edge of the cushion in front of him, lifts his feet up onto the sofa and tucks them out of the way. Harry stares at him.

“Come _here,_ then,” he says after a moment, when Harry hasn’t moved.

Harry does as he’s told, folding himself onto the carpet at Malfoy’s feet.

Malfoy huffs a laugh. “Turn around.”

Harry does so, even though his stomach jumps weirdly at exposing the vulnerable back of his bare neck to Malfoy.

Gently, fingers sink into his hair. Harry immediately stops breathing.

“If you would just put an anti-shatter spell on your glasses, you wouldn’t have to charm your eyes,” Malfoy says casually, as his fingertips start probing Harry’s scalp, catching gently on the damp knots of Harry’s hair.

“They’d get bent,” Harry says on a breath, whole body tight with the conflicting desires to keep perfectly still or to relax further back into the movement of Malfoy’s fingers. He swallows. “Out of shape. You know. Or my teammates would notice.”

Malfoy hums but says nothing more, hands beginning a steady rhythm. Harry’s had people play with his hair before, of course, idle, unconscious movements that were nice enough, but this feels different. Maybe because of the headache, or maybe because it’s Malfoy touching him. Malfoy’s long fingers carding through his hair. Malfoy’s soft breathing behind him.

He bites his lip to stop himself making any noise and lets his head drop forward, chin on his chest as he feels the tension drain down from his scalp right through his shoulders and out of his body.

Malfoy makes a small noise himself, and Harry’s fists clench in his lap. He is absolutely not going to get hard. He might melt into a puddle at Malfoy’s feet, but he is _not_ going to make this weird. After all, Malfoy still doesn’t know Harry listens to him getting off, definitely doesn’t know that by this point Harry has gotten off _himself_ several times thinking about it, and had probably only offered to soothe Harry’s headache for purely innocent reasons.

It’s just that it doesn’t exactly _feel_ innocent when Malfoy tugs on his hair like that.

“You’re— good at that,” Harry says, stilted, quiet, because the silence is making him want to do something stupid, like beg Malfoy to touch him literally everywhere else.

Malfoy exhales, probably smiles — Harry can’t see him, is facing the other way and has gone cross-eyed trying to keep a hold on himself, besides — and kneads his thumbs gently into the top of Harry’s neck. Harry’s spine shudders. “Thanks. I’m good with my hands.”

It’s a line, obviously it’s a line, but Harry’s stomach muscles tighten regardless. _Yeah_ , he thinks, _I bet you are. And I’d win good money on that bet because I hear the evidence of it almost every night through my fucking bedroom wall_.

If he had the capacity for rational thought, he might have taken a moment to appreciate the bizarre reality of the situation, considering his and Malfoy’s history, but instead he feels like any coherency is being steadily worked out of him by the pads of Malfoy’s fingers on his skull. Malfoy combs through his hair, presses his thumbs into the tender spot behind Harry’s ears, palms carefully around his forehead, drags his nails over the sensitive skin of his scalp until Harry’s nothing but a vaguely human-shaped bunch of nerves and tingles.

“Better?” he asks. Five minutes might have passed, or five years, Harry’s endorphin-stupid brain doesn’t know or care.

“Guh,” Harry says, making Malfoy laugh hard enough that Harry’s still embarrassed about it an hour later, when they’ve said goodnight and are both in their respective beds.

Not embarrassed enough, though, to have any kind of self-control, apparently. He comes so hard imagining Malfoy is getting off next door thinking about touching him that he actually tears a hole in his pillow biting down on it, a rip that he is absolutely going to have to figure out how to mend himself, unless he wants Mrs Weasley asking him what an earth he did to make the fabric split like that.

Harry thinks maybe something might shift between them after that, but Malfoy seems not to agree because he goes out that Friday night, like usual, like nothing’s changed, and brings home— well.

The guy is a bit short and his dark hair is messy and his eyes are green and when Harry walks into the kitchen Saturday morning in just his t-shirt and boxers he finds Ginny, Luna, Neville and Seamus sitting at the breakfast table, staring. They glance between him and the stranger, who’s busy making himself coffee, oblivious, and Harry is confronted with four sets of wide eyes and six frantically waggling eyebrows (Luna’s eyes are always wide, but she’s too focussed on painting Ginny’s nails to tell Harry with her face whatever it is the other’s are trying to communicate). Malfoy is nowhere to be seen. He probably isn’t even out of bed yet.

“Er, morning,” Harry says, more to the room at large than to the man pouring milk into Ron’s favourite mug. He heard them come in last night, of course — the thump of Malfoy’s bedroom door and the low hum of voices. And then the rest.

“Morning,” Neville says, voice strangled.

Harry sinks onto the bench opposite the other four, feeling like he hasn’t quite woken up. It isn’t— it has to be a coincidence. The guy’s wearing a dark shirt and pajama pants that Harry is pretty sure are _his_ — he hasn’t been able to find them for a while, Malfoy must have stolen them and now they’re—

“Hi,” the man says, turning to shoot Harry a smile over his shoulder before rummaging around for the sugar. (“Wait for it,” Ginny says under her breath.) “I’m Henry.”

Seamus makes a tiny, helpless noise.

Harry stares. “Right.”

There’s a distinctly awkward pause that Henry seems unaware of. He grabs the two drinks he’s finished making and spins, face colouring slightly when he realises they’re all still staring.

“Um, I’m just going to—” He gestures with one of the mugs and leaves, probably to take Malfoy’s tea upstairs to him.

“Is it me or,” Harry starts as soon as he’s gone, unable to finish the sentence. Like, the guy is white but besides that it’s _uncanny_ —

“No,” Neville says. “No, mate. Not just you.”

Seamus starts laughing and Ginny shakes her head, face splitting into a grin. “Oh god,” she says. “Oh my god.”

“Henry,” Seamus wheezes.

“He’s getting more blatant,” Luna says amiably, painting Ginny’s pinky bright orange. Ginny’s giggling so hard that she keeps missing and dotting the table with little coloured blobs.

“Who?” Harry asks, afraid he already knows the answer.

Luna confirms his suspicions. “Draco.”

Harry stares at her.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” he says slowly.

Ginny rolls her eyes. “Of course he’s doing it on purpose. He’s been doing it on purpose all summer.”

“Because he, what? Thinks fucking an endless stream of men right next door to me will make me want him?”

“Not an _endless_ stream,” Luna admonishes, frowning.

“Hasn’t it?” Ginny asks pointedly, raising her eyebrows.

Harry flushes.

“We all saw that head massage he gave you. Well, Ron did and told us all about it but, same difference. Honestly, Harry.”

“Yeah, but Harry wants a different head massaged, if you know what I mean.” Seamus snorts into his mug of tea.

“Ew.” Ginny says.

“Unfortunately, Seamus,” Luna adds, sipping her own tea. “We always know what you mean.”

///

Five days later it’s Thursday, Malfoy is getting off in his room, making noise, Harry is lying on his bed, going insane and resigning himself to the fact that this is probably how it’s going to be for the rest of his hopefully short life. This is the state of the world now, and Harry has to accept it, even if he isn’t happy about it. He’s come to terms with worse.

If his friends are right, and Malfoy is doing all of this on purpose, Harry hates him. Except for the part where he wants him in his bed.

If he really does like Harry, though, why all this messing around? Are they so far past a simple “fancy a drink, Potter?”?

Malfoy moans next door, as if in confirmation, and Harry resists punching his pillow. It isn’t even late, barely past 4pm. Far be it from Harry to condemn a man for having a nice, late afternoon wank, but _really_. The house is full.

And he’s hard, obviously. Of course he’s fucking hard, it’s practically Pavlovian at this point. Malfoy could probably knock something off his desk and Harry’s dick would perk up at the thud.

He groans loudly, forgetting himself for a second, and debates shoving his fist in his mouth. Ginny might have been joking, but if this carries on he really will have to invest in a gag. If Malfoy hears him, there’s no way of explaining it. If he comes over here to see what all the noise is about..

Quite of its own accord, his hand has found its way into his trousers and he presses the heel of it against his cock to relieve some pressure. Next door, Malfoy’s moans have taken on a breathy quality and he’s going to come before Harry can bloody well decide what to do, the bastard. Something’s going to have to give, and soon. He can’t just keep secretly getting off to his roommate’s sex noises indefinitely.

Malfoy falls silent and Harry sighs, flopping back onto the mattress and ignoring his erection. He probably deserves it anyway, to just lie there, frustrated, unsatisfied. That’s what you got for refusing to do anything about what you want, or for refusing to even admit that you want it in the first place.

There’s a knock on the door. Malfoy doesn’t even give Harry time to say anything, he just opens it and comes in, shutting it behind him. Jesus, he looks— well, he looks utterly fucked out, honestly. He has a high, pleased colour about his cheeks and he’s wearing those godforsaken leggings again, with a t-shirt that hangs down to mid-thigh.

“Hi?” Harry says, sitting up and clearing his throat when his voice cracks.

Malfoy smirks at him, eyes lingering on the hoodie Harry quickly bundled up and placed conveniently over his crotch when the door opened. They flick up to Harry’s bare chest.

“Hello,” he says on a sigh. He advances on Harry, climbing onto the bed on his knees. Harry resists the urge to scoot backwards away from him. “I thought we should have a chat, Potter. About things.”

“Things?”

Malfoy knee-shuffles closer.

“Mhm,” he hums and then crawls right into Harry’s lap. The hoodie somehow gets bunched to the side in the process so that it’s just Malfoy’s arse, right up against Harry’s crotch. “I just thought I should check in, you know. Make sure you’re still ok with our living arrangement.”

He rolls his hips experimentally and Harry bites his lip, hands coming up automatically to Malfoy’s waist to keep him steady. It’s taking an inhuman amount of effort not to just shove up into the pressure.

“Look,” Malfoy breathes quietly into the space between them, when Harry makes no response and there’s a prolonged pause. “Word is, you’re a little jealous, Potter.”

Harry shakes his head quickly, nose almost brushing against Malfoy’s. “M’not jealous,” he says, matching Malfoy’s low volume. “Just think you’re being a bit loud. Bad housemate etiquette, s’what it is.”

Malfoy laughs, head tipping back for a moment and exposing his long, pale neck. He seems pretty confident for someone who’s just planted themselves in Harry’s lap unasked, but then Harry is hardly pushing him off, is he, so he supposes it’s warranted.

“Would you prefer me to shut up?”

Harry shrugs awkwardly. _God_ , he’s hard.

“Depends.”

Malfoy’s mouth twitches. “On?”

“Why you’re making noise in the first place.” It comes out like a question.

Malfoy’s eyes go all hot and stare-y. He plants his hands on Harry’s shoulders and wriggles, smile innocent, as though he’s just shifting to get comfortable. It makes something in Harry stretch so close to snapping that his fingers dig heavily into Malfoy’s waist.

“Don’t,” he says through his teeth.

“What?”

“Start something you can’t finish.”

Malfoy’s smile widens, fast and wicked. “Oh, I intend to finish.”

Harry groans. It’s no good, he’s going to come in his pants in about three minutes if Malfoy doesn’t move, and two if he _does_. Even these tiny shiftings of his hips are about to do Harry in. There’s no way he’s missed the press of Harry’s cock through those leggings.

Malfoy’s pupils dilate at the noise, something Harry has a split second to notice before he lunges. He gets his fingers straight into Harry’s hair, an echo of the way he touched Harry nights before, and his mouth is hot and sweet and _wet,_ his teeth sharp on Harry’s lips one second and his tongue soft and slick and probing the roof of Harry’s mouth the next.

Harry feels his hands bunch in the fabric of Malfoy’s oversized shirt, just like he imagined, and Malfoy whines into his mouth. Even at this, even just kissing, he’s loud. Some distant part of Harry is vaguely impressed he can make so much noise when he has a mouthful of Harry’s tongue. He pants and murmurs, presses closer and crosses his ankles behind Harry’s back so that his thighs squeeze tight around Harry’s waist.

“Shit,” Harry swears, pushing him back for a second to catch his breath. He looks indecently hot with his hair all over his red face like that. Harry feels his dick actually twitch.

Malfoy apparently feels it too, because he whines again, ducks to suck at a spot on Harry’s neck that has his hips shoving up.

“Potter,” Malfoy says against his skin, voice unfairly steady. “Potter. Did you know there’s absolutely no sound-proofing between our rooms?”

Harry may actually growl. He grabs Malfoy’s waist and flips them, throws him bodily onto his back and hikes his shirt up, peels his leggings down. They’re fucking ridiculous and get stuck on Malfoy’s ankles for a second but eventually Harry has them off and can smooth his hands up those long, pale legs. Malfoy shudders, grinning even as his legs fall open.

Harry moves onto his stomach and Malfoy’s eyebrows shoot up, the outline of his cock straining against his underwear. Harry wonders if he’d even finished before knocking on Harry’s door, or whether he just got himself to the edge and came right over, ready and eager for it.

He rubs over him, the shape hot and hard through the fabric, watching as the look of surprise on Malfoy’s face crumples and he moans, _loud_ , and starts pushing his underwear down his hips. Between them they manage to get them off and over Harry’s shoulder somewhere, and then it’s skin on skin and Harry forgoes his hand and jumps straight in with his mouth.

Malfoy yells. It is, as loud noises go, pretty brilliant. Harry’s always liked this, the feel of a cock on his tongue, the intimacy of his mouth on someone’s body, and Malfoy is the most responsive partner he’s ever had. He won’t — or can’t — shut up, groaning as Harry sucks hard and lifts off slowly, dragging his tongue up the underside.

“Mother of Merlin, Potter,” Malfoy says as Harry looks up at him, twists his hand up and off, following the path of his mouth until Malfoy makes a high, bright noise. 

Harry grins, tilts his head. “Can I—?” he asks, trailing his hand downwards instead and stopping with his fingertips millimetres from the pucker of Malfoy’s skin.

Malfoy nods. “I already—” he breathes, chest heaving, and Harry has to suppress a groan of his own because of course, he fucking _heard_ him through the wall.

He presses two fingers, slick with distractedly conjured lube, against Malfoy without warning and they slip in with little resistance. Malfoy makes a noise like he’s choking on his own spit and his thighs lock around Harry’s face as Harry gets his mouth back on him and starts moving his fingers, drags them slowly out and back in again. He’s stretched out inside, wet but still a little tight.

“Ah, fuck,” Malfoy gasps, his hands fluttering on Harry’s shoulders before sinking into his hair. “ _Potter_.”

Harry refuses to speed up, even as Malfoy’s grip in his hair tightens to the point of pain. It’s novel hearing these sounds, the noises he’s come to expect from the other side of a wall, up close. And his name— he’s never heard that before.

He wants to hear it again.

He kisses messily down Malfoy’s cock and then keeps going, until his mouth meets his fingers and Malfoy lets out a string of curses, his fingers curling into Harry’s sheets. Harry licks over where he and Malfoy are joined and pushes another finger into him, free hand gripping Malfoy’s thigh, his thumb stroking soothingly. Malfoy keens. His back curls and his head comes up so Harry can see his face, sweaty and flushed, before he falls back again and wraps a hand around himself. Harry tugs him by the wrist, pulls his hand away from his cock and Malfoy swears loudly at him but doesn't try to touch himself again.

This is insane. Harry can hear every syllable coming out of Malfoy’s mouth, clear cut. Of course he _would_ retain perfect diction even with three fingers inside of him. It’s almost laughable. It’s pretty impressive. It’s so fucking hot Harry is about to come in his pants.

“Fuck, I knew it would be like this,” Malfoy says, body shifting on the bed as he drives his hips down to meet Harry’s fingers. “I just _knew_ you could only go so long listening to me before—” but his sentence is cut off as Harry swallows him down again, and his voice breaks into a cracked moan. “ _God._ Ok. I’m—”

“Hmm?” Harry hums around his cock, holds his fingers inside and watches Malfoy squirm at the vibration.

“I’m _close,_ I’m going to—,” he pants, slipping a small amount further down Harry’s throat. Harry pulls his fingers out and shoves them back in, timing it with his slow pull back off Malfoy’s cock, and then speeds everything up, works his hands and his mouth together as Malfoy continues to babble above him. “Yes, _fuck,_ I’m going to come, don’t stop, your _mouth,_ God—”

He tenses up, and Harry, still eager to hear his name on Malfoy’s lips one more time, prods firmly at his prostate and hollows his cheeks. Malfoy’s almost nonverbal at this point, making noises that are less words than pained, desperate sounds, but — God, _yes_ — he manages a throaty “ _Potter,_ ” before he comes into Harry's mouth.

Harry’s assumptions were off the mark, apparently. Malfoy doesn’t go silent as he empties himself down Harry’s throat, though he does stop forming coherent words. He still makes noise, just not the kind that would carry so easily through a wall. Small, hitched sounds, and, underneath it — the thing that, weirdly, is getting to Harry the most — his laboured breaths, these huge, unabashed gulps of air as his mouth hangs open and he starts to relax against the bed, coming down from his high. Harry’s heard him moan all number of things, and it’s somehow this, the quiet, intimate sound of his breathing returning to normal, that has Harry mesmerised.

They lie there for a moment, Harry feeling the urgent press of his cock against the fabric of his joggers — he hasn’t even got them off yet, and Malfoy’s shirt is still half on — but content, for now, to ignore it and keep running his fingers through the pale hair on Malfoy’s stomach. Malfoy sinks his hand into Harry’s hair in turn and scratches lightly with his fingernails so that Harry makes a small, involuntary sound, and Malfoy moves them, sits up and pushes Harry back into the bed, tugs his clothes out of the way and gets a hand around him.

Harry gasps and clutches at Malfoy’s upper arm, wanting to touch him, needing to hold on. The feel of his hands on Harry is too much, not enough, so _good,_ wrapped around his cock and—

When he pushed Harry back with one hand on his chest, he’d leaned over him, the momentum making his hand slip forward so that it now sits right at the base of Harry’s throat, and it’s all Harry can think about.

Malfoy notices his sharp intake of breath. He moves his hand slowly further up and Harry freezes.

All that time spent muffling his moans face-down into the pillow and his dick seems to have started associating the limit to his oxygen supply with coming his brains out.

Malfoy’s eyebrows raise. “Hm. Interesting.”

He’s barely pressing down at all, but just the feel of his thumb against Harry’s pulse point is making it jump unsteadily. Harry breathes carefully, swallowing. Malfoy watches his throat bob under his hand.

After a weighted pause he shifts, moves his hand to prop himself up on the bed next to Harry’s head and starts to stroke with the other again so that Harry doesn’t really have time to be disappointed. And then he leans down, nips lightly at Harry’s ear.

“Hold,” he says, his voice low.

Harry doesn’t even think about it, just sucks in a breath and holds it there, chest full as Malfoy hums, this time in approval, and speeds up his hand.

Harry’s close again almost immediately, or, still close really, has been close since he thought _fuck it_ and shoved his hand down his pants, before Malfoy even entered the room, and he can feel it building alongside the pressure in his chest as his lungs start protesting the lack of air. Malfoy stares down at him with this look on his face, like he can’t pull his eyes away, pupils blown wide even though he’s already come once.

It’s weird — Harry knows some people like this, the choking thing, but he never understood it. It felt too restrictive, a little too on the side of violence for his tastes. But this is— it’s different. It isn’t Malfoy holding him down. It’s Harry in control, Harry cutting off his own air supply because he wants to, because he knows it’ll feel good and Malfoy told him to. And he wants to do what Malfoy says, which isn’t really a new thing, if he’s honest.

His lungs are starting to burn. He has no breath to make a noise but a small, desperate sound escapes anyway as Malfoy squeezes tighter around his cock, free hand pushing Harry’s hair out of his face.

For all his expletives and demands when Harry had his hands on him, he’s being almost unbearably gentle now. Not silent — he’s still making small, encouraging noises as Harry lies there and doesn’t breathe beneath him — but quieter. His touch is softer, more tender.

“Oh,” he says, when Harry screws his eyes shut and his hips buck needily upwards, teetering on the edge. He leans down and touches his mouth to Harry’s, Harry’s lips pressed too tightly together with the effort of not breathing to actually kiss back, and says “Ok,” just like that, simple and decisive, and Harry comes on a long, perfect exhale, back arching as Malfoy strokes him through it, limbs locking and then seeming to deflate, like all the air in his body has been expelled with that one breath.

“Fuck,” he says, drawing the word out, half-expecting his voice to come out as a croak. It doesn’t, but it’s a little breathless, a little deeper. Malfoy’s eyes flash.

Harry sucks air into his lungs, feeling a bit lightheaded, in a pleasant, floaty sort of way. Malfoy watches him, one hand still combing through his hair.

“Well,” Malfoy says after a moment of quiet. “I suppose we may as well just knock the damn wall through. I see no point in it anymore.”

///

Downstairs, Ginny throws the remote at Seamus.

“Turn it up, for God’s sake,” she sighs, shooting an annoyed look at the ceiling. Seamus complies, thumbing the button until the sound of the TV is so loud it’s ringing in their ears. “Pair of bloody hypocrites.”

**Author's Note:**

> one day maybe i’ll write something that has an actual plot and isn’t just multiple slice-of-life scenes crammed in next to each other. or maybe i won’t! who knows, we’re all having fun. i am, at least. comments are always, always lovely to read xxx


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